


Plea of Insanity

by Tarlan



Category: Rampage (1987)
Genre: Drama, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Trope Bingo Round 6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-29 12:21:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6374569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/pseuds/Tarlan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reece's lawyer was angling for a plea of insanity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Plea of Insanity

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the **Michael Biehn** March 2016 challenge. and **Trope Bingo** Round 6: bets/wagers  
>  Originally also intended for **btfchallenge** but I didn't realize I'd have to wait until late April before posting so I'll create something new for that challenge closer to the reveal date.

No parent should outlive their child, Anthony thought as he broke the terrible news to Gene Tippetts. The man had already lost his wife in the brutal attack by Charles Reece and though no one really held out much hope of them finding five-year-old Aaron alive, the discovery of the tiny body dumped like a piece of garbage into the river still broke the hearts of even hardened cops. They had called Anthony down to the scene to witness first hand, just as he had gone to the first crime scene and later to the Tippetts' home to see rooms awash with spilled blood.

Sadly he could understand the grief from losing a child, with the recent loss of his daughter still hanging heavy on his heart, but at least he had the knowledge she had died peacefully in a hospital, not brutally slain.

"I should have been there," Tippett's cried. "I should have-."

Anthony reached out and gripped Tippett's hand, understanding the regret and anger that had no justification except in grief. He wasn't a betting man by nature but he wagered if Gene Tippetts and his younger boy had been there during the attack then he would be looking at prosecuting Charles Reece for two more murders. Two more senseless deaths at a time of year when most families were celebrating Christmas.

Anthony heard a noise and looked round to see four-year-old Andy Tippetts looking at his father from the motel room doorway, scared. The boy was the first to find his mother's mutilated and abused body, terrified and too young to understand exactly what he was seeing but knowing it was all wrong. Gene Tippetts spotted his son at the same time and opened his arms, allowing the boy to run into them, and holding him tight, trying to force back his grief for the sake of his living child. For a moment Anthony felt callous for giving the news outside a motel room with his son waiting inside, but the alternative was asking Tippetts to come down the station, leaving the man caught between black thoughts and false hope for the length of the journey.

"I'm so sorry for your loss," Anthony stated softly, but he knew the words, though heartfelt, were pitiful in the face of so much grief.

Some time later in the courtroom, as he made his closing argument and plea to the jury, Anthony thought about how this whole trial had focused on Reece, on his mental state, on his welfare, on his right to live according to many, losing sight of the innocent lives stolen away by his brutality, including two officers now lying in the morgue following Reece's escape attempt. Seven lives lost and so many other lives left shattered in the wake of that loss. People like Gene and Andy Tippetts, Officer Daning's wife and three children. He thought of how long it had taken just one of Reece's female victims to die as Reece mutilated and sodomized her. Those three minutes of silence in the courtroom stretched into an eternity judging by the expressions on the jurors' faces, and although he'd never asked for the death penalty previously, not truly believing in it, he'd never had to face such a monster across the courtroom before.

He got his 'guilty verdict' recorded by the Jury, but science overruled when a PET scan showed Reece's brain chemistry was chaotic. Abnormal. Insane.

***

**Four Years Later:**

Just as he had argued in the Judge's chambers during the trial, the so-called life sentence to a mental institution turned out to be a handful of years with the psychiatrists eager to free up space by getting rid of patients they now considered a low risk to society, but Reece had fooled them all before. Anthony reminded them of that as he testified against the release, reminding them of their hubris and shortcomings in the past that had led to them freeing Reece just six months before he went on his killing spree that Christmas.

The release on parole was denied due to Anthony's testimony but he knew he'd gained just a six-month reprieve. Six months to prepare to testify again, and again, for as long as he could if it meant keeping a monster off the streets of L.A., knowing one day he would lose and Reece would be free to kill again. He just hoped when that day came he would be ready to pack up his wife, two-year-old son, and newborn baby girl to move as far away from Charles Reece as he could, because he didn't believe Reece's kind of insanity was curable, and he could feel those cruel eyes staring hard at him in simmering resentment.

No parent should outlive their child, Anthony thought as he walked away from the parole board hearing. He would keep coming back because he had lost one child to pneumonia, and he had no intention of losing the rest of his family to a madman.

END  
 


End file.
